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Your Fitness Assessment--10 Reasons You Need One

You need a fitness assessment if you have been inactive for a while. You need to know where you are with fitness and how to begin taking steps to improve your health.

If you are overweight or have too much body fat (a skinny person can have too much body fat), your body is not as healthy as it could be. Start making changes today!

Here are 10 reasons you need a fitness assessment:

1. Identify your fitness goals and determine why your fat loss and weight loss efforts have failed or succeeded in the past. You also have to get your motivation right for your exercise program to work for you. This step takes you being "very honest" with yourself! Sometimes it is a painful process.

2. You will learn your body composition (body fat % vs. lean mass %). You will also learn "where you are fat." Excess abdominal fat has been shown to be a precursor to diseases such as cancer.

3. When's the last time you had your body measurements taken (chest, arms, neck, hips, waist, etc.)? This is part of your fitness assessment.

4. What's your health history? You might need a doctor's clearance before you can begin an exercise program.

5. What are your eating habits? Part of your assessment will look at what you are eating, how you are eating and changes that you need to make.

6. What is your basal metabolic rate? Don't know? You will after your fitness assessment. This rate helps you set the daily calories you will need.

7. Have you had low back pain for some time? If so, you probably have postural problems that need to be corrected. And, yes, a postural assessment is part of your fitness assessment.

8. Had any muscle spasms or "knotted muscles" lately? Then, you need to improve your flexibility. The fitness assessment will tell you where your muscles are tight, lengthened or weak.

9. When's the last time you checked your resting pulse rate? Your resting pulse rate will tell you how hard your heart is working in a resting state. For instance, my resting pulse rate was 58 beats per minute the last time I checked it. That's pretty low. When I was at peak condition as a college athlete, my resting pulse rate was 54-56 beats per minute.

10. How ready is your body for physical activity? You don't know? You will after your fitness assessment.